This weekend I heard another message that had me leaving church with a knot in my throat and a lot to think about. Pastor Mike is preaching through Hebrews 12 in a series called “Our Fight With Sin.” This weekend was Part 3–Reconsidering how hard we’re willing to fight. Hebrews 12:4 says

“In your struggle with sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”

The first point was this: Admit we’re “lightweights.” We get nasty e-mails or a rude look from someone and we’re all up in arms with the martyr’s syndrome. Yet, Scripture is full of stories of lives who said “no” to sin and “yes” to righteousness and paid a high price to do so.

Hebrews 11:36-38 gives a somewhat jarring reality check to our reaction to our own pain for the faith as it testifies to the price paid by our first century bothers and sisters in the faith–

“Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about om sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated–the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.”

That is intense. In fact, I can’t even fathom my life this way. I can make so much drama about having “one of those days” and come home at night saying, “Does everything have to be so hard?!” These Christians had to pay a high price to stand up for their faith and we fold at the idea of having to speak the gospel to a relative or long-time friend. “They might reject me!” we say. How sad. This isn’t the example set by so many of those before us.

We’re too busy to read our Bible’s, too ashamed to evangelize and we complain about having to be at church another night of the week…we have not resisted the worldly temptations for comfort and ease nearly as hard as we need to. Do we even know what resisting to the point of “shedding blood” means? This Sunday it was brutal to just say, “Yeah, I’m a lightweight,” but I’m eager to step up the resistance of temptation in my life and take choosing to be holy seriously.

It’s hard to believe that another week has come and gone! Getting into the fall schedule has made the week seem to fly by. Tyler and I are a little under the weather, but still having so much fun together! Everyday Tyler is learning to say new words or phrases. This week he came up to hand me something and when I looked down he said, “Mommy’s iPod.” I don’t think we ever tried to get him to say that, but I guess he just picked up on it! Tyler has really gotten to a point where he can talk with us and when we ask him questions he responds so well now. I love seeing him learn and grow and it’s amazing that the Lord allows us the stewardship of parenting because Bobby and I have so much joy daily training and loving this little guy.

This weekend we taught our high school group a new worship song that Bobby and Ty wrote last week called “This is the Day.” I’ve been singing the verses all morning!–

Your mercies are new today
Your faithful to me always
You are God and I’m living for Your praise

Your presence brings joy to life
Your pleasures, they satisfy
You are God and in You I find delight

Each day is a gift from God, but so often they can end up being all about me. From waking up to going to sleep really I’m working to get done what I need to get done. This song is a great exhortation to have a renewed perspective in Him. To live and rejoice in Him each day, not because He’s giving us what we need or helping us get our to-do lists done but because of who He is–You are God and I’m living for Your praise!

The chorus is straight from Psalm 118:24–

This is the day that the Lord has made
I will rejoice and be glad in it
Let everyone sing to the God who reigns
I will rejoice and be glad in Him!

This will be my prayer each day this week!

—–If you would like to hear the song “This is the Day” simply click on this link to Godsong Music and select “Launch the Music Player” from the top right column. It plays in a rotation with other rough recordings of worship songs Bobby and Ty have written.

Twelve weeks ago I set a goal for myself for the summer. I wanted to take that little bit of schedule change in summer and give that time back to the Lord. My goal was to memorize the whole book of James, but I’m just now starting on chapter 2.

At first when the 12 weeks were up I thought, “What went wrong? Was I too ambitious?” But it seems foolish to only set goals I know I can achieve. Kind of like putting things you’ve already done on your “To-Do” list just to have something you can check off.

This weekend I’ve been asking other people how their goal went this summer and that helped me figure out the problem. It isn’t that we’re just lazy wasting hours in front of the TV or sleeping in till noon everyday. It’s not even that we don’t know that our goals were important and good things to do. Looking back I can see that the main reason I neglected my goal was due mostly to lack of discipline. I realize now that if I needed to have a plan to do a certain number of verses each week and then have someone ask me each week to tell them the passage I had been working on. With discipline and accountability I could have made more progress.

I’m disappointed that I didn’t finish the whole book of James because I have benefited so much from having the first chapter committed to memory. But even though I didn’t meet my goal this was a valuable lesson for me. We shouldn’t lower the expectations, but work more specifically with discipline toward those expectations.

I can see this same dynamic in the Christian life. We see huge expectations in Scripture that would translate into some challenging goals. We try to go after them, but when we don’t meet them, too often we lower our expectation to something more doable. But instead of lowering the goals to where we are, we need to push ourselves through discipline and accountability to attain the goals that the Lord has set for us.
2 Corinthians 5 gives us great perspective on this–

Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

2 Corinthians 5:6-10

This passage makes it clear that as Christians our goal is to please Christ. This needs to be our ambition in everything we do. To be honest we fall short of this goal all the time just like I did with my summer challenge. The question now is are we going to lower our goals or work harder to be disciplined. I hope you’ll join me with a renewed motivation to go after those goals, making it our aim to please Christ!

Every Wednesday I pick up Martha Peace’s The Excellent Wife and start reading where I had left off the last Wednesday. My book marker had fallen out, so today I was flipping forward and backward trying to find my place when I read this:

You may never comprehend all the reasons why God does what He does, but you can trust that He knows better than you what you really need. Keep in mind that you will never be what God wants you to be until you place yourself under God’s plan by coming under the authority of your husband.

The Excellent Wife, 17

God’s authority is meant to protect us. He made us, He designed our role as wives. When we follow His plan, we will be protected from the consequences of trying to live by our own rules. That is why we have to be careful that we don’t hinge our obedience to God on anyone or anything.

So many wives have made up their minds to only start submitting to their husband as soon as he starts being the spiritual leader. But it is so foolish for us to put a hold on our own spiritual growth by refusing to obey God as far as it depends on us. The wise wife isn’t ignoring the reality that it is very difficult to submit to or love her husband, but she accepts God’s call on her and does what it takes to walk in His ways, not her own.

This quote was a good reminder to me to put myself under God’s plan without making excuses or conditions. So often I think I am justified in blaming my bad attitude on something someone said or skipping my quiet time because of a busy day or ascribing my angry response to lack of sleep. Even though external things can be an influence, they do not determine the internal choice that I must make of how to respond.

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Romans 8:28-29

In the quote, Peace reminds us that we won’t always understand why God is doing something. Even though we may never comprehend what God is doing in our lives, as Christians, we can be confident that everything happening is working together to conform us more to the image of Christ. It isn’t our job to work everything out in our lives for good. Our job is putting ourselves under Him, obediently following His word.

This weekend I walked out of church with a heavy heart a lump in my throat. Pastor Mike has been on vacation for the last four weeks and came back starting a powerful new series called “Our Fight with Sin: Getting Serious About Our Sanctification”. This week’s passage was Hebrews 12:1.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

Sometimes I can get comfortable with my self. I guess I don’t think that I have any huge sins in my life. I don’t have a substance addiction, I’ve never committed adultery, never killed anyone, I’m not lying or stealing–In my flawed court of law I’ve declared I’m okay. I know I’m not prefect and that I sin regularly but for some twisted reason I accept those as part of my growth process.

Maybe I haven’t done these “big” acts of sin, but all sin is big and against God (Psalm 51:4). Pastor Mike pointed out Jesus’s rebuke in Matthew 5:27-30, that if you look after someone lustfully you have committed adultery with them in your heart or in verse 22, if you hate someone you have murdered in your heart. Sin is a heart issue and Sunday morning I looked honestly into my heart and saw a conglomeration of private sins that I tolerate and I felt heavy because I saw that this isn’t okay.

It’s not enough to simply say, “I’m working on it.” Sometimes I put forth an effort but I’m not really fighting it. Colossians 3:5 says,

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.

That doesn’t sound like, “I’m working on it.” If I was really putting sin “to death” in my life daily I would grow in Christ with vigor because there wouldn’t be, as Hebrews says, sin hindering and entangling me.

I don’t know what might be keeping you from seriously following Christ with ambitious faith. But are you ready to throw off anything that hinders you and have a renewed drive toward holiness? I know that I am. We cannot tolerate sin in our lives. We can’t even just “work on it.” We need to do whatever it takes to get rid of it so we can persevere in our faith in Christ.

Throughout his message, Pastor Mike referred to the heart attitude of Psalm 139. If we maintained this heart toward our sin we would make ourselves open for Him to change us. I hope you will join with me in this prayer this week as we do everything it takes to put up a fight against our sin.

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts

See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

Psalm 139:23-24